The invention relates generally to electronic business transaction processing, and more particularly to systems for accessing back-end enterprise applications and data from the Internet by providing an intelligent, real-time data and logic cache that is synchronized with back-office systems.
Many business enterprises have collections of enterprise application systems that contain large volumes of disparate applications and data that are not compatible with the real-time, online transaction processing requirements of Internet web-based applications. Many of these systems were designed prior to the availability of the Internet. As a result, there exist many incompatibility issues between the various systems, including interface and synchronization incompatibilities as well as an inability to operate on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis. For some applications, the data stored in disparate systems are related and requiring linking in a relational manner to provide useful information to customers, other companies and employees of an enterprise.
Because of the lack of a unified, coherent solution to the problems of connecting web-base applications to back office or legacy systems, many enterprises have to hire technical personnel to develop a unique solution to solve their own unique enterprise system problems. This approach oftentimes results in a less than optimum solution to the problem because of evolving technologies and lack of a sufficiently large, skilled workforce. More importantly, the burden with operating and maintaining a unique and usually non-flexible solution consumes large amounts of enterprise resources.
There is a need for a real-time transaction-processing platform that connects online web-based applications to back office enterprise systems while providing control over enterprise data and business rules. The platform must provide synchronization with back office systems to manage performance and enhance security of the online business environment. It must be easily and rapidly applied to a wide range of business environments while minimizing the burden of installing, operating, enhancing and maintaining the system. The system must be capable of providing high performing, reliable, fault tolerant, load balanced and scalable operation.